Jack Solomon, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” (542); Phyllis and Debra Japp, “Purification through Simplification: Nature, the Good Life, and Consumer Culture” (553)

 

 

Jack Solomon, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” (542); Phyllis and Debra Japp, “Purification through Simplification: Nature, the Good Life, and Consumer Culture” (553)

Jack Solomon, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” (542)

One. What is a salient paradox of American culture?

America promises equal opportunity on one hand but has a ferocious hunger for privilege, advantage, and distinction on the other. Humans have contradictory impulses, to belong to the group and to rise above and be special. We want to attain “a social summit beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.” These are the two faces of the American dream.

I remind you of a study in which people would rather make 50K and everyone else make 25K than have everyone make 100K.

Equality does not quell our vanity, our libido ostentandi, the need to show off.

Two. How does advertising manipulate us through the contradiction of social equality and social distinction?

Chevrolet trucks are symbols of the everyman, the working man, the heart of America. But another Chevy brand, Cadillac, represents a rarified, elite club, a sign that you are someone who deserves to be pampered.

Status symbols are now tied to our identity. For examples, hipsters, intelligentsia, and cognoscenti prefer Apple computers while “farmers” use PCs.

Mini Coopers and hybrids tend to be the cars of cosmopolitans, the urbane, the educated, the skinny pants-wearing sophisticates.

The Subaru is also a fashion symbol, which says, I don’t need fashion. This is ironically a fashion statement.

In America, the longer the driveway, the higher one is on the social-economic ladder. Some driveways are so long, you cannot even spot the house from the driveway’s opening.

Rolex, Breitling, Omega, Panerai, and a few others are watch brands that tell the tight-knit club of the rich that you have made it into the club. There is a billion-dollar counterfeit watch industry in which you can buy the aforementioned brands, which start at five thousand and can cost well over thirty thousand dollars, for under $500.

“Status symbols are signs that identify their possessors’ place in a social hierarchy, markers of rank and prestige.”

Three. What is the life of fantasy explained on page 546?

The products’ signs embellish fantasies and are more important than the products’ substance. As an example, McDonald’s is not just a burger place; it’s an escape for people of all ages.

 

Four. Do ads that promise increased sexual desire and appeal really work and why?

It turns out that buying a product that is associated with sexual appeal works in many ways, not the least of which is the placebo effect. If we’re confident a product gives us added sexual appeal, then that confidence translates into added appeal. On a deeper level, this placebo affects us physically. Young college men in a Duke study had lower testosterone when sitting in a Toyota Camry but increased testosterone when sitting in a Porsche.

Phyllis and Debra Japp, “Purification through Simplification: Nature, the Good Life, and Consumer Culture” (553)

 

One. What is the contradictory quest in the American culture of happiness?

 

There two myths: The good life is based on the “belief in happiness and fulfillment through technology, the availability and acquisition of wealth and possessions, upward social mobility, and political influence.” This myth treats nature like a resource that must be mined and utilized for the acquisition of things. Nature must be conquered for human pleasure and wellbeing. “More is better” uses “nature as raw material to develop and maintain the commodities necessary for the good life.”

 

The second myth, contrary to the first one, is a life spare of possessions and greed on one hand while being strongly connected to nature and humanitarian concerns on the other.

 

The pendulum tends to shift back and forth as we go through a binge and purge cycle.

 

Popular culture (which translates into consumer culture) co-opts this human dichotomy for its own purposes, using advertising to appeal to these contradictory forces.

 

Two. What makes the “simple life” a convenient advertising tool?

 

Marketers can shape the “simple life” any way they want because it’s not a fixed entity but “a shifting cluster of ideas, sentiments, and activities.” The myth of the simple life starts as “hostility toward luxury and a suspicion of riches, a reverence for nature and a preference for rural over urban ways of life and work, a desire for personal self-reliance though frugality and diligence, a nostalgia for the past and a skepticism toward the claims of modernity.” This expression can be laid out in many ways in the world of advertising. The Subaru is an example of a simple life consumer item.

 

A lot of consumer items are symbols of “voluntary simplicity,” a growing movement of people who want to shun excess and “downsize” their lifestyle. There is a huge amount of self-help literature out there that treats consumer excess like a disease that needs to be cured. This downsized lifestyle appeals to middle-class professionals who are “torn between the need for more and the need for less as they try to manage the complexity of their lives.” The professionals have the luxury of embarking on a “personal journey” of self-imposed downsizing. For them, this downsizing is a form of “personal growth.”

 

Two. What parts make up the narrative of the minimalist lifestyle of The Good Life?

 

There must be a conversion experience, an epiphany, that at the root of their lives there is an emptiness and a contamination that needs purgation.

 

They repent from their old consumer excesses.

 

They become evangelists or spokespeople for a simpler existence that is closer to nature and human connection.

 

They must establish guilt of the old life, the bad life. “There must be something better.”

 

They must seek redemption by finding their true place in life, their “home,” their meaning.

 

Having found salvation, they must now bear witness to their new lifestyle discovery.

 

Writing Assignment Suggestions

 

Reading the Signs, page 567, numbers 4 and 5.